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Bill Prohibiting Genetic Discrimination Moves Forward
An anonymous reader writes "The bill to ban genetic discrimination in employment or insurance coverage is moving forward. Is this the death knell of private insurance? I think private health insurance is pretty much incompatible with genetic testing (GT) for disease predisposition, if said testing turns out to be of any use whatsoever. The great strength of GT is that it will (as technology improves) take a lot of the uncertainty out of disease prediction. But that uncertainty is what insurance is based on. If discrimination is allowed, the person with the bad genes is out of luck because no one would insure them. However, if that isn't allowed, the companies are in trouble. If I know I'm likely to get a certain condition, I'll stock up on 'insurance' for it. The only solution I can see is single-payer universal coverage along the lines of the Canadian model, where everyone pays, and no one (insurer or patient) can game the system based on advance knowledge of the outcomes. Any other ideas? This bill has been in the works for a while."
they call it.
But no one takes the law seriously.
Ice Cream has no bones.
We've had private insurance with no genetic testing for a long time how.
How is keeping the second condition going to mandate the end of the first? It's ridiculous.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
There are very few businesses that as a rule are genuinely evil, but insurance companies are one in that category. The whole idea of the entity that has to pay for your health only benefiting when they do not is morally flawed.
Health care needs to be a right, and the risk or cost spread over everyone, with no one excluded. This also means that any benefit in savings must be good for the whole. Private profit making business can not be part of this for it to really be fair to all.
We could have had really top notch health care for everyone for less than we have spent on this silly war in Iraq, and with the give away's big political donors in the name of 911, we could all have our own Doctor.
Health care just needs to come from general revenue, like the Military, and cover every one. We spend more on weapons than the rest of the world combines, and most of that is greedy contracters gouging us. Just the waste in the Pentagon budget could cover everyone.
I really think it is time to take our government back and have it serve us.
So There
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Sharing risk is supposed to be the goal of insurance, going back to when it was a group of shipowners getting together in Lloyd's Coffeehouse to agree to cover each other if any of their ships sank (they all made a little less profit, but none had to worry about being utterly ruined by a single event. If insurers begin to stratify the clients on the basis of genetic testing, a market will arise to insure the never-tested against bad test results (pay us $xxx up front, and we cover your increased premiums). What the proposed legislation does is force participation in that market, by essentially bundling it with all policies. That may be a good thing, because it's otherwise too easy for the insured to game the system (get a test secretly, buy "testing insurance" only if the test shows that it would pay off). The problem with the whols system is that the market appears to have failed. You can't simply pay a little bit more to find an insurer who won't tell you, go ahead and die!
Just remember, the 'P' in HIPA stands for Portability not Privacy or Protection.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
You seem to be under the impression that the US has the best health care in the world. We do not. Not even close. Nearly all of the top countries in that field have socialized health care systems (the exception being Singapore, a micro-nation). Quality of care does not "always" decrease from socialization... in fact, it appears that the exact opposite occurs in most cases.
But hey, since when have stupid things like "facts" or "ethics" ever meant jack shit to conservatives?
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
So how come, in oh-so-socialist Britain, every time they try to privatise or outsource parts of the (publicly-funded) National Health Service, there's a clear and marked pattern of drops in quality of care, overall service, manageability and an increase in cost?
The point is: medical care is a fundamental necessity in any society--modern or otherwise. Denying it because of affordability (which is ultimately your "solution") isn't just ludicrous, it's positively Dickensian. Healthcare has to be, by nature, universal, or perfectly preventable deaths occur on a wider scale than most would like to admit. Sure, you're "Free", but is the guy who lives on the street "Free"? What about the the woman down the road who's barely holding down her job in the bar and earning a pittance?
Perhaps your thinking is that people who can't afford healthcare should just become victims of natural selection, in a manner of speaking, so that only the frugal survive. Or, perhaps you think the Government can skirt the issue by providing some voucher scheme or something which provides free healthcare to those who can't afford it themselves: which, thanks to the wonders of taxation, is more unfair than just a straight healthcare tax (or "National Insurance" as it's called over here).
Britain might be "talking about" denying people access to medical care under certain conditions, but that's about all it's doing. Don't believe everything you see on Fox.
And, for the record, the NHS isn't by any means perfect--in no small part thanks to the efforts of our Glorious Government to outsource critical areas to the private sector--and for that reason alone people are perfectly free to pay a premium to avoid waiting lists, get a private room or prettier nurses in a commercial clinic; the healthcare they get should be of an approximately equal standard in either case, but people who can afford luxuries are welcome to splash out on them if they wish.
(Also, while the NHS isn't perfect, I'll take it over the US "sorry, you don't have any insurance, come back on Thursday for the free clinic and pray you don't need surgery" crap any day of the week).
It doesn't matter to you that medical expenses are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States, and for millions of Americans, getting sick or injured at the wrong time can destroy their savings and ruin them for the rest of their lives.
It doesn't matter to you that millions of people are unable to move to better jobs, even when those jobs are available, because they're dependent on their current employers for health insurance.
No, apparently all that matters to you is how well the system works for the wealthiest individuals, and to hell with everyone else. In America people do not wait months for basic services. Actually, they often do. Private health insurance (especially HMO) doesn't guarantee that you'll be treated any more quickly than people in Canada or the UK.
If your private insurer won't pay for a facility that can provide those "basic services" immediately, I suppose you can shop around and find a facility that will, but you can also do that under the national health care systems that Obama and Clinton are proposing.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
> medical care is a fundamental necessity
Boo hoo. Food is a fundamental necessity. So I guess the only solution is to nationalize the means of production, distribution etc of foodstuffs?
Shelter in much of the country is a fundamental necessity and pretty damned useful everywhere else. So do we nationalize housing and ration it too?
Outside of cities with mass transit, a car is now a fundamental necessity. See where your reasoning goes?
> Sure, you're "Free", but is the guy who lives on the street "Free"?
Yup. Freedom that doesn't include the possibility of failure isn't Freedom. Freedom includes the right to do things you (and me) think are dumb/wrong/etc. or it isn't Freedom.
If some guy uses their freedom to screw their life up I see no reason for you (using the power of government) to seize the product of my labor to help the asshole out. Now, being a civilized person, I might help the guy out if he is in my neighborhood (and he is ready to BE helped) but that is MY decision.
NO karma is granted for 'helping' with other people's money. Since the victim (taxpayer) didn't give it willingly they don't get any either. And since the target usually doesn't actualy get helped when some nitwit social worker tries to manage their life it is a loss all around. If you guys would get that fundamental truth into yer heads the world would be a better place.
The problem with wanting stuff for free is TANSTAFL. Somebody pays. And any system of distributing goods and services beyond voluntary exchange quickly leads to lowering production and thus to rationing.
Our current mixed free/socialist medical system offers ample examples of this in action, comparing and contrasting it with full socialist systems and with the historical record of a fully free system should be enough to convince any person capable of rational thought as to the more desirable direction we should be attempting to seek reform toward.
Democrat delenda est
> Others might say "you can be the crazy old coot out in the woods who's
> afraid of society, but we recognise that humanity is a family - we take
> care of each other and recognise that we're interdependent".
In other words YOU are deciding the crazy old coot is WRONG and by virtue of your superior morality/reasoning/whatever you claim the right to make another your slave and force him to obey your will.
By MY moral code that crazy old coot has every right to give you a 2x4 response applied directly to the forehead when you try it.
The right to be wrong is THE fundamental human right. It's fair game to reason with someone you think is making a bad decision but the second you use force to impose your will on them you have lost the argument. (Cases of extreme mental illness being an obvious exception. The moral argument being that the person isn't a free moral agent and will probably be grateful once they are sane.)
Democrat delenda est
Would it actually be possible for consumers to 'game the system' if insurers weren't allowed to use testing?
/if/ testing exists, insurance-visibility doesn't affect gamability that much.)
I mean, in the short term, sure, I can see a surge of consumers (who, via private testing, know they're at higher risk) getting risk-appropriate insurance which (via a lack of test information) is offered at a lower-than-appropriate (appropriate to the relevant risks) rate... but after a few decades of accumulating data, wouldn't the basic metrics change? Wouldn't the insurance companies essentially be able to see "While the risk for disease X is 5% in the population, the risk for the same disease among those who buy our disease X insurance is 70%, so we will price our disease-X insurance with the expectation we'll have to pay out for 70% of our clients, rather than 5%"?
It just seems like, in the long run, the lack of testing for insurance companies would make no significant difference. In the short run, the system could be gamed, and whenever a new disease cropped up, insurance for that particular disease could be gamed (if 'highly overpriced insurance' didn't become the norm for new things), but in the long run you'd get about the same results from second-hand testing (see who applied for your policy because they got a positive private test) as from doing first-hand testing.
Granted, I don't like the idea of such data being a standard part of my medical history... I'm not advocating that insurance companies should get to do testing... I'm just not convinced that (in the long run) the situation would look that much different with and without insurance-testing. (I certainly admit, though, that the situation where testing exists at all is different from when testing doesn't exist... just that
Travel around parts of Europe for a time, for example. The subtle and not-so subtle attitude changes that come when people aren't deeply afraid of economic debilitation from injury or disease are remarkable. And these changes smack of freedom.
As to the earlier poster's argument about the risk of gov't trying to control your life: a) have you been paying attention to the US political climate? You call this new? and b) that's what the old saw about "eternal vigilance" is for, eh? In this case, it's a matter of the controlling power of corporations (insurance companies) vs. the controlling power of government. At least we have elected voices in one of those groups.
>> medical care is a fundamental necessity
> Food is a fundamental necessity.
Actually, humans survived for millenia without medical care. They rarely survive more than a few weeks without food.
Arguably, medical care isn't a fundamental necessity. Of huge value if you'd like to live comfortably for longer and have greater odds of surviving to maturity... but not actually a necessity for the species.
The problem is we mistake medical care for being a fundamental necessity. Then, when idiots choose to make payments on a bigger car or TV, instead of their health insurance, we wring our hands and give a damn when the consequences of "I'd rather have more money now and accept the increased likelihood of suffering or dying later." come back and bite them. Instead, "Wow? You made a really dumb choice, didn't you. Hope the TV was worth it." becomes "Oh, that's tragic. Look how the system failed to provide you with your basic necessity. We must do something!"
Medical care isn't a fundamental necessity - just damn nice to have and pretty sensible. If people would own their own dumb choices, it wouldn't be such an issue. Instead, we're in a society where we make stupid short term choices then whine about how unfair it is when the consequences hurt us, expecting others to help mitigate our stupidity.
Deciding someone else is wrong is part of these discussions - you think I'm wrong, I think you're wrong, and we both are proposing the other live in the system we describe. To you, I'm imposing on you by telling you to bear the costs of society taking care of all its members, and to me, you're imposing on me by saying I must accept that the benefits from such a system will not be had. There is no moral high road here, just a disagreement on how things are managed and whether peoples fiscal autonomy is more important than public health (plus a completely independent question over whether socialised health care is better or worse for society, and for what parts of society).
Government is based on taxes, and hopefully it provides good value to its society for the taxes it collects. Where it fails, I want it to do better. It cannot function without a source of funds though, and that usually means taxes. If taxes to you are theft, then I am advocating that form of theft in order to benefit society. I don't think of it as theft, but if you do, then the phrasing is an accurate description for what I think can lead to good things for society from our government.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Insurance companies charge me higher rates based on my Y chromosome and its supposed predictive effects on my behavior. This is a far weaker link than other types of genes-to-outcomes linking.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.